DOCSLIB.ORG

Odysseus and Feminine Mêtis in the Odyssey Grace Lafrentz

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Odysseus and Feminine Mêtis in the Odyssey Grace Lafrentz Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal, Vol. 11 Weaving a Way to Nostos: Odysseus and Feminine Mêtis in the Odyssey Grace LaFrentz Abstract. My paper examines the gendered nature of Odysseus’ mêtis, a Greek word describing characteristics of cleverness and intelligence, in Homer’s Odyssey. While Odysseus’ mêtis has been discussed in terms of his storytelling, disguise, and craftsmanship, I contend that in order to fully understand his cleverness, we must place Odysseus’ mêtis in conversation with the mêtis of the crafty women who populate the epic. I discuss weaving as a stereotypically feminine manifestation of mêtis, arguing that Odysseus’ reintegration into his home serves as a metaphorical form of weaving—one that he adapts from the clever women he encounters on his journey home from Troy. Athena serves as the starting point for my discussion of mêtis, and I then turn to Calypso and Circe—two crafty weavers who attempt to ensnare Odysseus on their islands. I also examine Helen, whom Odysseus himself does not meet, but whose weaving is importantly witnessed by Odysseus’ son Telemachus, who later draws upon the craft of weaving in his efforts to help Odysseus restore order in his home. The last woman I present is Penelope, whose clever and prolonged weaving scheme helps her evade marriage as she awaits Odysseus’ return, and whose lead Odysseus follows in his own prolonged reentry into his home. I finally demonstrate the way that Odysseus reintegrates himself into his household through a calculated and metaphorical act of weaving, arguing that it is Odysseus’ willingness to embrace a more feminine model of mêtis embodied by the women he encounters that sets him apart from his fellow male warriors and enables his successful homecoming. In Homer’s Odyssey, the character Odysseus witness women exercising mêtis through their is closely associated with mêtis—a Greek word adoption of disguises, their singing and storytelling, that translates to “cleverness” (Käppel, 2006) and and, most importantly, their weaving. As a craft that describes the qualities of “intelligence, cunning, requires great skill and serves as a form of visual versatility, and a facility with words” (Murnaghan, storytelling, weaving exists as a powerful version 2000, p. xviii). While Odysseus’ mêtis has long been of mêtis that is exercised by women. Penelope’s recognized in his propensity for disguise, his ability woven mêtis is particularly important in ensuring to craft elaborate stories, and his powers of manual Odysseus’ successful homecoming, or nostos. In craftsmanship (such as his construction of a raft contrast to the infamous Clytemnestra, who uses to sail away from Calypso’s island) (Murnaghan, her mêtis to weave a web that ensnares her husband 2000, p. xviii), in order to fully understand the Agamemnon and transforms his homecoming into nature of Odysseus’ mêtis, we must place it into a bloodbath, Penelope famously uses her mêtis— conversation with the mêtis of the women who in the sense of both her cleverness and her manual populate the epic. For outside of Odysseus himself, craftsmanship—to weave and unweave a shroud, mêtis in the Odyssey most notably appears in thereby staving off her suitors and preserving her female figures; from the goddess Athena, to quasi- chastity for her husband’s eventual return. The divine figures such as Calypso, Circe, and Helen, ghost of Agamemnon in fact directly attributes to mortals like Odysseus’ own wife Penelope, we Odysseus’ successful homecoming to Penelope’s 18 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 virtue and loyalty (24.202-6). It is possible to push order for Telemachus to kill the female slaves Agamemnon’s statement even further. Odysseus’ who dishonored him in his absence as an example successful homecoming depends not only on of Odysseus’ warrior brutality (Bowers, 2018, p. Penelope’s fidelity, but also on Odysseus’ own 825). While Odysseus’ violence at the end of the willingness to transcend the typical masculine epic is unequivocally brutal and excessive, it is not warrior mindset and embrace tactics more closely exclusively coded as masculine and does not wholly aligned with a feminine mode of mêtis. While fit into traditional methods of warrior violence. mêtis defines Odysseus long before his laborious Odysseus’ successful nostos depends upon his ability journey back to Ithaca (the well-known story of the to capitalize upon both his traditional warrior skills Trojan horse, for instance, reveals that Odysseus and his mêtis. It also depends on his willingness was devising cunning schemes long before to recognize when a version of mêtis coded as meeting clever women like Calypso and Circe), the feminine (such as weaving) is more appropriate women he encounters on his journey home from than a version of mêtis coded as masculine (such Troy provide him with an alternative, feminine as shipbuilding). Odysseus’ mêtis sets him apart model of mêtis most powerfully embodied by the from his Bronze Age warrior contemporaries like art of weaving. It is this stereotypically feminine Agamemnon, ultimately making him a hero better version of mêtis that Odysseus capitalizes upon suited to Homer’s own audience living in a society when he strategically weaves his way back that emphasized skill and the necessity for male into his household at the end of the Odyssey. and female collaboration in the service of the larger Before turning to the text itself, it is useful community. to establish a broader historical context for the Of all the characters in the Odyssey, mêtis Odyssey. Likely recorded in written form for is most powerfully associated with the goddess the first time around the eighth century BCE, the Athena—the epic’s preeminent deity. Athena’s Odyssey is set in the earlier world of Bronze Age mother (Zeus’ first wife) was in fact herself named Greece (Murnaghan, 2000, pp. lii-lv). Thalmann Metis (Käppel, 2006). After hearing the prophecy (1998) describes Greece’s move toward a polis- that “a son born of Metis” would overthrow him, based society in the “late eighth century BCE” (p. Zeus swallowed his wife, resulting in Athena’s birth 23), and we might imagine that Odysseus’ ability to from Zeus’ own head (Graf & Ley, 2006). Athena use not only strength, but intellectual savvy, would inherited her mother’s cleverness, resulting in her have served him well in a city-based civilization in association with skilled crafts such as metalworking, which skill was becoming an increasingly important shipbuilding, and weaving (Murnaghan, 2000, way to define one’s place. As Redfield (1983) notes, p. xxix). The figure of Athena thus highlights the in contrast to the purely “retrospective” nature of powerful link between mêtis and weaving—a craft Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey simultaneously “looks practiced extensively by ancient Greek women. back on an heroic age already ended” and “looks Throughout the Odyssey, Athena exhibits her own forward” to the “post-heroic” world (p. 220). It is mêtis through her frequent use of disguise as well as Odysseus’ willingness to look beyond the warrior through the clever stratagems that she devises with code of violence and personal glory exhibited in Odysseus to help him defeat the suitors. Despite the Iliad and capitalize upon his cleverness and Athena’s apparent femininity, it is important to intelligence that powerfully links him to this post- draw attention to the fundamental androgyneity of heroic world. Bowers (2018) similarly recognizes the Olympian gods and goddesses. Neither male Odysseus as a “new kind of hero endowed with a nor female, Athena possesses the ability to assume broader range of attributes than those prized in the characteristics typically coded as feminine or Iliad,” but, consistent with scholarly consensus, masculine in order to serve her own needs and desires concludes that upon his nostos, Odysseus as well as those of her father, Zeus. As becomes reestablishes his masculine authority and identity as clear later in the Odyssey, while Odysseus himself warrior through his assertion of violence (pp. 825- is not androgynous, he shares Athena’s ability to 6). Following Saïd (2011), Bowers cites Odysseus’ capitalize upon mindsets, attributes, and versions 19 Vanderbilt Undergraduate Reseach Journal, Vol. 11 of mêtis associated with both genders. While this the potentially ensnaring nature of Circe’s mêtis. flexibility is one of Odysseus’ greatest strengths, Dangerous web-like weaving also takes center Odysseus’ experimentation with gender roles and stage in Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, where norms ultimately serves, much like Athena’s, to the woven net that Clytemnestra devises to trap reinforce and reinstate the larger patriarchal system. Agamemnon is similarly referred to as a “spider’s Beyond the divine Athena, Odysseus web” (l. 1491). These references suggest the encounters several quasi-divine women on his extent to which female mêtis as exhibited through journey whose cleverness and craftsmanship shape weaving and storytelling is often associated with his own understanding of mêtis. Take, for example, clever plans invented by women to ensnare or Calypso and Circe—a nymph and an enchantress entrap men. There is a fine line between cleverness who live on magical islands set apart from both and deceptiveness; mêtis is a double-edged sword. the human world and the rest of the gods and While visiting Sparta, Odysseus’ son goddesses. The opening depictions of each of these Telemachus meets another quasi-divine female women emphasize their mêtis in the form of skillful weaver and storyteller—Menelaus’ infamous wife weaving. We first meet Calypso “seated inside, Helen. Though Odysseus himself does not encounter singing in a lovely voice/ As she wove at her loom Helen, she remains relevant to my discussion Humanities with a golden shuttle” (5.65-6), and Circe too first both because she serves as a powerful example of appears “singing in a lovely voice/ As she moved how female mêtis manifests itself in both skillful about weaving a great tapestry” (10.237-8).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Rhythm of the Gods' Voice. the Suggestion of Divine Presence
    T he Rhythm of the Gods’ Voice. The Suggestion of Divine Presence through Prosody* E l ritmo de la voz de los dioses. La sugerencia de la presencia divina a través de la prosodia Ronald Blankenborg Radboud University Nijmegen [email protected] Abstract Resumen I n this article, I draw attention to the E ste estudio se centra en la meticulosidad gods’ pickiness in the audible flow of de los dioses en el flujo audible de sus expre- their utterances, a prosodic characteris- siones, una característica prosódica del habla tic of speech that evokes the presence of que evoca la presencia divina. La poesía hexa- the divine. Hexametric poetry itself is the métrica es en sí misma el lenguaje de la per- * I want to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of ARYS for their suggestions and com- ments. https://doi.org/10.20318/arys.2020.5310 - Arys, 18, 2020 [123-154] issn 1575-166x 124 Ronald Blankenborg language of permanency, as evidenced by manencia, como pone de manifiesto la litera- wisdom literature, funereal and dedicatory tura sapiencial y las inscripciones funerarias inscriptions: epic poetry is the embedded y dedicatorias: la poesía épica es el lenguaje direct speech of a goddess. Outside hex- directo integrado de una diosa. Más allá de ametric poetry, the gods’ special speech la poesía hexamétrica, el habla especial de los is primarily expressed through prosodic dioses es principalmente expresado mediante means, notably through a shift in rhythmic recursos prosódicos, especialmente a través profile. Such a shift deliberately captures, de un cambio en el perfil rítmico.
    [Show full text]
  • Feasting in Homeric Epic 303
    HESPERIA 73 (2004) FEASTING IN Pages 301-337 HOMERIC EPIC ABSTRACT Feasting plays a centralrole in the Homeric epics.The elements of Homeric feasting-values, practices, vocabulary,and equipment-offer interesting comparisonsto the archaeologicalrecord. These comparisonsallow us to de- tect the possible contribution of different chronologicalperiods to what ap- pearsto be a cumulative,composite picture of around700 B.c.Homeric drink- ing practicesare of particularinterest in relation to the history of drinkingin the Aegean. By analyzing social and ideological attitudes to drinking in the epics in light of the archaeologicalrecord, we gain insight into both the pre- history of the epics and the prehistoryof drinkingitself. THE HOMERIC FEAST There is an impressive amount of what may generally be understood as feasting in the Homeric epics.' Feasting appears as arguably the single most frequent activity in the Odysseyand, apart from fighting, also in the Iliad. It is clearly not only an activity of Homeric heroes, but also one that helps demonstrate that they are indeed heroes. Thus, it seems, they are shown doing it at every opportunity,to the extent that much sense of real- ism is sometimes lost-just as a small child will invariablypicture a king wearing a crown, no matter how unsuitable the circumstances. In Iliad 9, for instance, Odysseus participates in two full-scale feasts in quick suc- cession in the course of a single night: first in Agamemnon's shelter (II. 1. thanks to John Bennet, My 9.89-92), and almost immediately afterward in the shelter of Achilles Peter Haarer,and Andrew Sherrattfor Later in the same on their return from their coming to my rescueon variouspoints (9.199-222).
    [Show full text]
  • The Odyssey and the Desires of Traditional Narrative
    The Odyssey and the Desires of Traditional Narrative David F. Elmer* udk: 82.0-3 Harvard University udk: 821.14-13 [email protected] Original scientific paper Taking its inspiration from Peter Brooks’ discussion of the “narrative desire” that structures novels, this paper seeks to articulate a specific form of narrative desire that would be applicable to traditional oral narratives, the plots of which are generally known in advance by audience members. Thematic and structural features of theOdyssey are discussed as evidence for the dynamics of such a “traditional narrative desire”. Keywords: Narrative desire, Peter Brooks, Odyssey, oral tradition, oral literature In a landmark 1984 essay entitled “Narrative Desire”, Peter Brooks argued that every literary plot is structured in some way by desire.1 In his view, the desires of a plot’s protagonist, whether these are a matter of ambition, greed, lust, or even simply the will to survive, determine the plot’s very readability or intelligibility. Moreover, for Brooks the various desires represented within narrative figure the desires that drive the production and consumption of narrative. He finds within the narrative representation of desire reflections of the desire that compels readers to read on, to keep turning pages, and ultimately of an even more fundamental desire, a “primary human drive” that consists simply in the “need to tell” (Brooks 1984, 61). The “reading of plot,” he writes, is “a form of desire that carries us forward, onward, through the text” (Brooks 1984, 37). When he speaks of “plot”, Brooks has in mind a particular literary form: the novel, especially as exemplified by 19th-century French realists like Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola.
    [Show full text]
  • Homer's Odyssey and the Image of Penelope in Renaissance Art Giancarlo FIORENZA
    223 Homer's Odyssey and the Image of Penelope in Renaissance Art Giancarlo FIORENZA The epic heroine Penelope captured the Renaissance literary and artistic imagination, beginning with Petrarch and the recovery of Homer's poetry through its translation into Latin. Only a very small number of humanists in the 14'h century were able to read Homer in the Greek original, and Petrarch's friend Leontius Pilatus produced for him long-awaited Latin translations of the Iliad 1 and Odyssey in the 1360s • Profoundly moved by his ability to finally compre­ hend the two epics (albeit in translation), Petrarch composed a remarkable letter addressed to Homer in which he compares himself to Penelope: "Your Penelope cannot have waited longer nor with more eager expectation for her Ulysses than I did for you. At last, though, my hope was fading gradually away. Except for a few of the opening lines of certain books, from which there seemed to flash upon me the face of a friend whom I had been longing to behold, a momen­ tary glimpse, dim through the distance, or, rather, the sight of his streaming hair, as he vanished from my view- except for this no hint of a Latin Homer had come to me, and I had no hope of being able ever to see you face to face"'. The themes of anticipation and fulfillment, and longing and return that are associated with the figure of Penelope coincide with the rediscovery of ancient texts. To encounter Homer for the first time in a language with which one was 3 familiar was as much a personal as a literary experience • As Nancy Struever observes, Petrarch's Le Familiari, a collection of letters addressed to contemporary friends and ancient authors, values friendship and intimate exchange because 4 it leads to knowledge and affective reward • Books on their own (Le Familiari, XII, 6) constituted surrogate friends with whom Petrarch could correspond, con­ verse, exchange ideas, and share his affections.
    [Show full text]
  • Summary Ng from the Homecomi Homer Od from the Not Recognize His Father
    Name Date from the ODYSSEY: PART 2 Summary THE HomecomiNG FROM THE ODYSSEY Homer Setting: Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, possibly around 1200 B.C. Book 16: Odysseus returns home dressed as a beggar. He meets Eumaeus, the faithful swineherd. Then he sees his son, Telemachus. Telemachus does not recognize his father. When Odysseus removes the disguise, Telemachus thinks he is a god. Finally, Telemachus recognizes his father. Father and son weep to be together again. Book 17: Odysseus returns to his palace still disguised as a beggar. Outside, he sees his dog, Argus, who has been treated badly while he was gone. Odysseus is angered by the dog’s poor condition. Book 21: Odysseus discovers that many suitors are at the palace. They want to marry Penelope. She has given up hope that Odysseus will return. She plans a contest. She will marry the winner. The men must string Odysseus’ bow. Then they must shoot an arrow through the holes in 12 ax heads. No one can string the bow. Still dressed as a beggar, Odysseus completes both tasks. Book 22: Odysseus takes off his disguise. He kills Antinous, the leader of the suitors. The remaining suitors decide they must fight with Odysseus. Telemachus and two servants join Odysseus in the fight. With the help of these men and Athena, Odysseus kills all the suitors. Book 23: Penelope is not sure the man is really Odysseus. She asks a servant to put his bed FROM outside his bedroom. Odysseus says that the bed cannot be moved. One of its posts is the from the trunk of an olive tree.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Circe and Odysseus in Ancient
    Circe and Odysseus in Ancient Art This resource offers a series of questions that will help students engage with four ancient artifacts that represent the goddess Circes interactions or influences upon Odysseus and his companions. All these artifacts were made several centuries after the Odyssey was composed, but they should not be approached as straightforward or mere illustrations of episodes from the Odyssey. Rather, all five works of art (four artifacts and the epic poem) represent different versions of the story of how Circe interacts with Odysseus and his men. This resource assumes that students already will have read Books 9 and 10 of the Odyssey. This handout is formatted as a guide that an instructor can use to facilitate a conversation during a class meeting. The questions are meant to be asked by the instructor while students actively look at images of each artifact, using the weblinks provided. After each question, examples of possible observations that students might offer are included in italics. The italicized answers also sometimes include extra information that the instructor can share. Artifact #1: A kylix (drinking cup) at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) Attributed to the Painter of the Boston Polyphemos Made in Athens (Attica, Greece) ca. 550-525 BCE https://collections.mfa.org/objects/153469/drinking-cup-kylix-depicting-scenes-from-the- odyssey;jsessionid=31E168DC9A32CBB824DCBBFFA1671DC1?ctx=bb1a3a19-ebc8-46ce-b9b1- 03dc137d5b86&idx=1 Accession number 99.518 1. We are going to look at both sides of this kylix, but we will begin with the first image on the website (“Side A” of the kylix, which does not include anyone holding a shield).
    [Show full text]
  • Sensory Witchcraft in Shakespeare's <I>Antony and Cleopatra</I>
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English English, Department of Spring 4-20-2020 "You Have Witchcraft in Your Lips": Sensory Witchcraft in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth Hannah Kanninen University of Nebraska - Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Kanninen, Hannah, ""You Have Witchcraft in Your Lips": Sensory Witchcraft in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth" (2020). Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English. 162. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishdiss/162 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research: Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. “YOU HAVE WITCHCRAFT IN YOUR LIPS”: SENSORY WITCHCRAFT IN SHAKESPEARE’S ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA AND MACBETH by Hannah Kanninen A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Major: English Under the Supervision of Professor Julia Schleck Lincoln, Nebraska May, 2020 “YOU HAVE WITCHCRAFT IN YOUR LIPS”: SENSORY WITCHCRAFT IN SHAKESPEARE’S ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA AND MACBETH Hannah Kanninen, M.A. University of Nebraska, 2020 Advisor: Julia Schleck Scholarship on witches and witchcraft within Shakespeare’s plays has been a popular subject for many scholars. But one of Shakespeare’s most famous characters has not yet been integrated into this scholarship: Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra.
    [Show full text]
  • Competing Philosophies in Calderon's El Mayor Encanto, Amor
    Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume LXXXVII, Number 2, 2010 The Figure of Circe and the Power of Knowledge: Competing Philosophies in Caldero´n’s El mayor encanto, amor JONATHAN ELLIS Oklahoma State University At first, Caldero´n’s mythological play follows the well-known story of Homer’s Odyssey. On their way home from the Trojan War, Ulises1 and his crew stop at the island of the witch Circe. Most of the Greeks search the island and arrive at the palace of Circe as their leader waits at the beach. Rather than be wary, they choose to indulge their desires and baser natures. As we know, Circe transforms all but one of them into beasts with a potion. However, from this point on Caldero´n begins to introduce significant changes into the story known from both Homer and Ovid. When Ulises confronts Circe, she gives him also a potion, but he does not drink, having learned of its danger and having learned how to render it useless.2 Defeated, Circe cries out, ‘¿Quie´n cielos airados, / quie´nma´s ha sabido que yo?’ (1515a).3 This early passage is key, indicating that she recognizes knowledge to be the basis of her power with which she attempts to control all of nature, the elements and men. However, 1 I have retained the Spanish spelling of the names throughout, in order to clearly distinguish between Caldero´n’s characters and those of Classical literature. 2 In Homer, Odysseus is aided by Hermes who provides the moly root as protection against the effects of Circe’s potion.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Penelope and Molly: an Intertextual Analysis
    Reading Penelope and Molly: An Intertextual Analysis A thesis submitted to the Miami University Honors Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors By Michelle L. Mitchell May 2004 Oxford, OH ii Abstract Reading Penelope and Molly: An Intertextual Analysis by Michelle L. Mitchell This thesis takes an intertextual approach to Homer’s Odyssey and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Intertextual analysis goes beyond examining the ways Joyce adopts Homer’s themes and characters in his own modern epic to also consider the ways in which a reading of Ulysses can affect one’s understanding of the Odyssey. Examining the reader’s role in the production and consumption of texts allows for a more realistic examination of how texts are actually processed. The focus of my interetextual analysis of both works is on the representation of women, particularly Penelope and Molly Bloom. iii iv An Intertextual Analysis of the Representations of Women in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses by Michelle L. Mitchell Approved by: _____________________________________, Advisor Judith de Luce _____________________________________, Reader Madelyn Detloff _____________________________________, Reader Kathleen Johnson Accepted by: _____________________________________, Director, University Honors Program v vi Acknowledgements Many thanks to my advisor, Judith de Luce, for her encouragement and guidance. Thanks also to Madelyn Detloff and Kathleen Johnson, my readers, for their suggestions. I would also like to thank the Office for the Advancement of
    [Show full text]
  • Helen of Troy: She Was Not a Dumb Blonde
    HELEN OF TROY A HEROINE IN A MAN’S WORLD! Katerina Ladianou, Classics, OSU Helen is a beautiful woman, some say a Goddess, others say a whore because of her adulterous ways, and she is pursued relentlessly by suitors from all over the ancient world. Homer, Euripides, and Stesichorus all narrate her story, but Homer is the original source in his 2 epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The fairest woman in the world is Helen, the daughter of the King of Sparta Tyndareos and his wife Leda. Their other daughter Clytemnestra is married to Agamemnon. Such is the fame of the beauty of Helen that every young prince craves to marry her. Superhero Theseus abducts her first, but her brothers Castor and Pollux, [both Argonauts, who sailed to Colchis through the Hellespont with Jason on the Ship Argo to get the Golden Fleece], get her back home. So, when suitors from all over Greece assemble in Sparta to ask for her hand, her father Tyndareos, fearing another abduction makes them take an oath to defend whomever he chooses for her husband, and, moreover, that they collectively would punish anyone who tried to abduct Helen. Then Tyndareos chooses Menelaos and he makes him King of Sparta. In the meantime, Goddess Aphrodite sends an image of Helen to Paris of Troy who at the time is out in the fields shepherding his father’s goats; he falls madly in love with Helen, and the rest is history, for love is the strongest force in the whole world! In the Iliad, Paris, a prince of Troy, a city that has accumulated enormous wealth by controlling the flow of merchant shipping through the nearby Hellespont [in what is now NW Turkey; the Dardanelles], abducts Helen.
    [Show full text]
  • 23 Hero-Without-Nostos.Pdf
    1 23 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self- archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com”. 1 23 Author's personal copy Int class trad DOI 10.1007/s12138-014-0367-6 ARTICLE A Hero Without Nostos: Ulysses’ Last Voyage in Twentieth-Century Italy Francesca Schironi © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract The article reviews the reception of Ulysses’ last voyage in twentieth- century Italy. Ulysses’ last voyage is used by Italian authors to discuss different and often opposing views of the ideal human life as well as the intellectual and exis- tential angsts of the twentieth century. In addition, the Italian twentieth-century Ulysses becomes part of a metapoetic discourse, as going back to the Homeric and Dantesque myths of Ulysses for an artist also means interrogating oneself on the possibility of creating something new within a long tradition. This metaliterary dimension adds to the modern Italian reception of Ulysses, making it a unique case of the intersection of many different layers of reception both in chronological and thematic terms.
    [Show full text]
  • Troy Myth and Reality
    Part 1 Large print exhibition text Troy myth and reality Please do not remove from the exhibition This two-part guide provides all the exhibition text in large print. There are further resources available for blind and partially sighted people: Audio described tours for blind and partially sighted visitors, led by the exhibition curator and a trained audio describer will explore highlight objects from the exhibition. Tours are accompanied by a handling session. Booking is essential (£7.50 members and access companions go free) please contact: Email: [email protected] Telephone: 020 7323 8971 Thursday 12 December 2019 14.00–17.00 and Saturday 11 January 2020 14.00–17.00 1 There is also an object handling desk at the exhibition entrance that is open daily from 11.00 to 16.00. For any queries about access at the British Museum please email [email protected] 2 Sponsor’sThe Trojan statement War For more than a century BP has been providing energy to advance human progress. Today we are delighted to help you learn more about the city of Troy through extraordinary artefacts and works of art, inspired by the stories of the Trojan War. Explore the myth, archaeology and legacy of this legendary city. BP believes that access to arts and culture helps to build a more inspired and creative society. That’s why, through 23 years of partnership with the British Museum, we’ve helped nearly five million people gain a deeper understanding of world cultures with BP exhibitions, displays and performances. Our support for the arts forms part of our wider contribution to UK society and we hope you enjoy this exhibition.
    [Show full text]